CONCLUSION.
One morning a little lad was observed by his mother to be making great
efforts to stretch his chubby limbs to such an extent as to place his
feet in every one of his father's tracks.
"What are you trying to do, Sonny? Come into the house quick, or you'll
catch cold," called the anxious mother.
"No, no, Mama; I don't want to; I want to follow papa. I'm trying to
walk in his footsteps," replied the innocent child.
Does this cause the smoking, drinking, swearing, card-playing, Godless
parents to halt and reflect? God knows; we hope so. Does this fill the
mother of cherished, idolized little ones with remorse of conscience?
Does it occasion her to take a retrospective view of the time when,
during courtship days, she was warned and advised of the indiscreet
marriage she was about to make, because of her sweetheart's well-known
dissolute propensities? Yet all those warnings and pleadings were in
vain.
The little innocent ones are trying to walk in their parents'
footsteps. Myriads of mothers are weeping and wishing they had been
firmer; that they had not so readily yielded to the ardent persuasions
to marry, but had waited until such times as true reformation,
repentance, and turning to the God they were then serving had taken
place in their sweethearts' lives.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these--It might have been.
Poor, poor remorseful, unhappy wife and mother, my heart aches for you
as you realize the sowing and weep over the prospective reaping. Long
since you have grown cold in your Christian experience. You realize it
today as never before. You wonder what you are going to do about it?
The older children have outgrown your jurisdiction. Mary is running
with company you do not approve of, to balls, theaters, and other
demoralizing places; wanting finery you are not able to afford,
although you do your best. You can't get any help from her; for, when
not otherwise engaged, she is absorbed in novel-reading. It does no
good to complain to her father; in fact, that seems only to make a bad
matter worse. You haven't an atom of her confidence. When she was
younger, you never really encouraged her to give it, and now, though
but fifteen, she laughs at you because she thinks that she knows so
much and that you know so little. All her confidence is given to those
you do not approve of, and you are dreading the outcome, the
inevitable.
Then there's thirteen-year-old Tom. While you sat up mending his torn
coat the other night after he had gone to bed, you found some tobacco
and cigarette paper in his pocket. When you quietly asked him next
morning what it meant, he only laughed and replied, "That's nothing.
All us kids smoke nowadays. _It won't hurt us any more than it will
father. He smokes._" You are wondering how you can find out whether he
has contracted any more of his father's bad habits, and while searching
his room, you come across a dirty pack of playing-cards hidden in the
back part of one of the bureau drawers.
Awful vision of the future of these two older children is yours as you
ponder what you can do to subvert the growing evil in your home. You
indulge much in vain regrets--vain, indeed, so far as you are
concerned. But listen, mother--you who would lay down your life to
spare Mary from disgrace and eventually an ignominious death; you who
love Tom so dearly you would give all the world were it yours to make
him understand that the habits he is contracting lead only to impaired
health and disgrace, ofttimes to imprisonment, sometimes to the
scaffold. It is not too late yet, distressed mother, particularly with
the two younger children, who are just beginning to ask leading
questions. These you must, _you must answer_, so that your little son
and daughter will find no need of inquiring of other children
concerning the beautiful plan of life, which should never be imparted
to them by any other than you yourself. "What must I do? What can I
do?" you ask. Listen. I'm going to tell you.
Lose no time. Do as I did. Go to God, in your secret closet. Lay all
your troubles and problems at his feet. Throw yourself on his loving
mercy. Confess your backsliding, your sins, your errors, your
weaknesses, everything--everything that is causing you, your husband,
and your children to be held by the enemy of souls, and that will soon
bring more misery into your life and their lives, unless God undertakes
for you and them. Then, cost what it will, take the humble place before
God and them. Tell them of your love for them; of the mistakes you have
made, through false modesty, in not gaining their companionship, their
confidence. Ask them to help you in the future by trusting you more
than they do any other friend or acquaintance. Tell them how much you
once loved God, and that now, after wandering far away, you have
returned to him. Go with them to Sunday-school and to other religious
services; set up, even in the face of all opposition, the family altar;
ask a blessing at table; have an open Bible always.
The outcome. Probably at first, and maybe for some time to come,
rebellion, even desertion, even more sin to battle with; more
heartaches, more tears, more struggles than ever heretofore. But "_be
thou faithful_." Thy loyalty, thine efforts, shall be rewarded. Watch,
wait, pray always.
There is only one reason to be given why the children go
wrong--_Godless homes_. "Train up a child in the way he should go; and
when he is old, he will _not_ depart from it." Prov. 22:6.
One day a clergyman handed me two very startling verses, the characters
of which were all too true. I remarked that some day, God willing, I
would add to the verses and set them to music. I have done so, and in
His name, I herewith give them, under the awful title:
WANTED, RECRUITS FOR HELL.
Johnson the drunkard is dying today,
With traces of sin on his face;
He will be missed at the bar, at the play.
Wanted, a boy for his place.
Ruby, poor Ruby is passing away,
A victim of vice and disgrace.
Wanted, recruits for the houses of shame,
Some mother's girl for her place.
Simons, a gambler, was killed in a fight;
He died without pardon or grace.
Wanted, to train for his burden and blight,
Somebody's boy for his place.
Wanted for dance-halls, for brothels, for bars,
Girls attractive of form and of face,
Girls to decoy and boys to destroy;
Have you a child for the place?
"Wanted," pleads Satan, "for service of mine,
Some one to live without grace,
Some one to die without pardon divine;
Please train me your child for the place."
That eminent writer, Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, says:
"Every person on earth is making some sort of a cell in his or her
brain every waking moment of the day or night.
"Thoughts are things. Thought is energy. Thought is a creative power.
That is why it is so important to direct the minds of human beings to
good, kind, helpful thoughts. [Let me add, to direct them, from the
very commencement, to the great, loving God and his Son, our Savior.]
"Parentage is the oldest profession of men and women in the world, but
there are the smallest number of prize-winners in that profession of
any in the world. [Why? because of a neglected, insulted God.]
"Real, good motherhood must include the universal motherhood. It must
make a woman love her child _so unselfishly_ that she is willing it
should suffer while learning its lessons of kindness, thoughtfulness,
and protection, rather than to enjoy itself while taking away the joys,
the privileges, or the rights of other creatures, human or animal."
The warden of a certain State prison, who is a student of human nature,
said to some visitors one day, "If a child is properly educated to the
age of ten, no matter what its inheritance, it never becomes a
criminal." His sentence includes all the needed preventatives of crime.
Oliver Wendell Holmes when asked, "When should a child's education
begin?" promptly replied, "Two hundred years before it is born."
There would be little or no need of the rescue missionaries had parents
and guardians but heeded these words in Deut. 6:5-7: "Hear, O Israel:
The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these
words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart: and thou
shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and
when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them
for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between
thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thine houses,
and on thy gates." "O that there were such an heart in them, that they
would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be
well with them, and with their children forever!" Deut. 5:29.
It is very, very blessed to undertake the part of a good Samaritan. It
is far more blessed so to know and serve the Lord, that our present and
future progeny, instead of sharing a destiny similar to many of these
depicted between these pages, may, under any and all circumstances,
enjoy the everlasting smile of His countenance, that peace and joy in
their souls which this world can never give, neither take away.
Lord, we pray thee, "so teach us to number our days, that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom." Psa. 90:12.